The climate and cultural shifts that our tween and teen girls are exposed to have changed within the last 20 years...

• • Girls and young women between the ages of 16 and 24 experience the highest rate of intimate partner violence — almost triple the national average.

• • Among female victims of intimate partner violence, 94% of those age 16-19 and 70% of those age 20-24 were victimized by a current or former boyfriend or girlfriend.

• • Violent behavior typically begins between the ages of 12 and 18.

• • The severity of intimate partner violence is often greater in cases where the pattern of abuse was established in adolescence.

• • 1 in 5 women and 1 in 59 men in the United States is raped during his/her lifetime.

• • 19.3 million women and 5.1 million men in the United States have been stalked.

• • 66.2% of female stalking victims reported stalking by a current or former intimate partner.

• • Intimate partner victimization is correlated with a higher rate of depression and suicidal behavior.

• • Violent relationships in adolescence can have serious ramifications by putting the victims at higher risk for substance abuse, eating disorders, risky sexual behavior and further domestic violence.

• • Being physically or sexually abused makes teen girls six times more likely to become pregnant and twice as likely to get a STI.

• • Victims of intimate partner violence lose a total of 8,000,000 million days of paid work each year, the equivalent of 32,000 full-time jobs.

• • Intimate partner violence is estimated to cost the US economy between $5.8 billion and $12.6 billion annually, up to 0.125% of the national gross domestic product.

• • Between 21 60% of victims of intimate partner violence lose their jobs due to reasons stemming from the abuse.

• • Between 2003 and 2008, 142 women were murdered in their workplace by former or current intimate partners. This amounts to 22% of workplace homicides among women.

The Let's Talk About Boyz Teen Dating Violence Awareness and Prevention Series is a multi-component curriculum designed to prevent violence as well as to reduce or eliminate engagement in ongoing dating violence. It is therefore both a primary and secondary prevention program.

 According to recent studies numerous schools, after-school community-based and faith-based centers across the United States are implementing Teen Dating Violence TDV, Human Trafficking, Stalking and Rape prevention programs (Weisz & Black, 2009), and evaluations of these programs are encouraging. In a recent meta-analysis of 23 school-based TDV interventions, De La Rue, Polanin, Espelage, and Pigott (2014) found participants in the intervention groups significantly increased their TDV knowledge and improved TDV attitudes and conflict management skills.